


my birthright (isn't mine to have)

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: reflections (a harry potter fanfiction collection) [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Victoire Weasley Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 17:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victoire Weasley and her birthday, the 2nd of May. </p><p>(Or, how the war had impacted her indirectly)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my birthright (isn't mine to have)

Victoire Weasley hates her birthday. It isn't quite true, she'll laugh off to one of her older cousins, but there are the white lies that are harmless and the white lies that lead to the start of a second Wizarding War because of the results of the First. 

This lie is neither. This truth is something that she knows growing up, that the day of her birth is one of misery and pain and loss, a day where no one in her family smiles nor laughs, the day where she smiles too-brightly to hide the growing resentment that lies in the marrow of her bones, that dictates her life from start to finish. 

It begins as a child, when her parents wouldn't hold celebrations on the day itself, and they'd dress her up in fancy and stuffy clothes and listen to her Uncle Harry tell a speech she doesn't understand at three. Harry doesn't smile, and his facial expressions are solemn, grim, and no one laughs. Uncle George doesn't stop crying, her Uncle Percy half-heartedly tells her Happy Birthday, and everyone is red-eyed or sobbing their hearts out. She thinks it's because of her, that she is cursed. 

They tell her when she is five. Tell her about the war, the consequences. The deaths, and the date. It's her mum, speaking French, and dad adding on when he thought it wasn't enough. She doesn't understand, not really. 

At eleven, she's gotten used to it. Gotten used to the tears, the sobbing, the heartache. There's her cousins of course, who understand less than her, and so they wish her a Happy Birthday, albeit quietly because even they understand the formality of the event. It hurts just as much now, and she thinks it's still not fair as she watches Uncle Harry speak, eyes dry, and her mosaic heart once again breaking. 

She is sixteen when she tells her Uncle Percy she is cursed, a sentiment she has held for thirteen years. Uncle Percy smiles with a sort of melancholic air she comes to associate with him- the one that spoke of regrets that never stopped coming, the one that he tries so hard to make up for. 

He tells her, it's the date. It's the significance of the date, and it's not fair to anyone, especially not her. 

She thinks that breaking down into sobs of her own is a adequate response to it, because no one had told her that it wasn't her fault, but it's not that. Because he is the first person to tell her she is a victim of something beyond her control, and it hurts, a deeply cut wound that never stops bleeding because it is her wound to carry as long as she lived.

She's seventeen when she realises she is angry. She is angry at them, at the world, at herself for having chosen to be born on that damn date, because she can't remember a single birthday where people are happy, or smiling, or are genuine about it. She can't remember a single time her dad would smile large, her Uncle George making unforced jokes, and her Uncle Percy a non-entity. 

She is seventeen, drinking from a bottle of stolen Muggle Whiskey, sitting on the ledge of the Astronomy Tower on May First, celebrating her coming of age by remembering the teary look her family would get on that day. Her long blonde hair falls around her, creating a veil around her, and she thinks she would look like a angel in that moment. 

She throws the bottle against the old stones, her Head Girl badge soaked with alcohol. She throws the bottle, throws it, and watches the glass shatter all around her. Let the glass shatter, let it break. Let it be broken into nothing, into useless shards people would get hurt from, and she thinks it's nice, comforting to watch. 

She never lets her anger go, and she never tells her family. It's the sort of secret she whispers to herself at 2 AM, in broken French, aware that no one was awake and that only she was. Her hair is her veil, long and pale, a tint of red if you squinted. It looks like dried blood, she figures, in one of her times of self doubt. 

She never has a happy birthday memory herself, and she stops attending after Hogwarts. The memorials- because how can she, when it has been the most influential factor shaping her childhood? Her name, after the Battle of Hogwarts. Victory: defined as benign successful in a fight, being on the side that defeated the others. Her life, dictated by a event out of her control, shaped by the aftermath. Her birthday, a never ending chain of misery and anger, of remarks she had heard so many times that she could recite in her nightmares in vivid clarity. 

Of course, they ask. She only tells them, she's celebrating her birthday, as she lies in the bed of her flat, surrounded by Alcohol and a wet pillow, a battered wall covered in dents from things being thrown onto it. Her hair is cut short, to her shoulders. It's not a veil, but light and airy, the bottoms dyed a red colour. 

She reclaims her day, her birthday. They still cry, they still mourn, but she doesn't. She'll stop by the Burrow, prepare dinner for them because she'll know they won't do anything about it, and walk away. She'll go to the shadiest pubs, where men don't mind that she pays them with cash and not a credit card, and she'll dance to heart's content, mumbling a mix of English with the occasional French word thrown into it. 

She'll fix her mosaic heart, but it will never be whole. There will be seventeen years worth of damage left empty, and in the cracks she will start anew. She will move on with her life, find something that makes it better. She will laugh, she will cry, but she will never come back to listening to her Uncle Harry talk about May Second, because the day had impacted her from her birth. 

She will let her anger heal, but it will remain. It will always remain, a reminder of her past, a reminder of her family's loss. But she will not let it ruin her Birthday for her, because the day is shared by many people, and it is also shared by her. 

It is hers to reclaim, hers to take back. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ staliahs :D 
> 
> (also [reflections](http://archiveofourown.org/series/518938) (the set of works it's in) is heavily influenced by fanfiction.net, which is always interesting to study, especially if you look at it ff.net's history in relation to the rise of ao3. but whatevr.)


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